LoboRESPECT committees get down to work

The University of New Mexico’s Sexual Assault and Awareness Task Force is moving forward on recommendations made to the Provost on coordinating and streamlining the university’s efforts to combat sexual violence on campus.

At a recent meeting, Dean of Students Tomás Aguirre described the LoboRespect CARE model to a large group of university and community partners who will comprise the various subcommittees doing the work.

CARE is an acronym for the components of the model:

C for compliance

A for advocacy

R for response

E for education

A steering committee made up of the chairs of the subcommittees and the Dean of Students will coordinate the effort to align the university’s resources, clarify the process and educate the community.

“This group represents almost 50 different units from around campus and even off campus, with about 80 people total taking part,” said Aguirre. “It’s a big undertaking and a tough issue to tackle.”

The LoboRESPECT CARE model is the outgrowth of several other initiatives on campus including the CommUNITY Council,

the Presidential Task Force on Sexual Violence and the Hazing Work Group.

“None of these previous efforts has disappeared,” Aguirre said. “They have simply evolved into this current, more comprehensive model.”

Heather Cowan, manager of the Office of Equal Opportunity, will lead the Compliance group tasked with making sure all the policies align and obligations are met. Summer Little, director of the Women’s Resource, will chair the Advocacy group which is responsible for support, training and outreach. The Sexual Misconduct and Assault Response Team (SMART) falls under the advocacy area. Plans include creating similar response teams for other issues going forward.

UNM Police Chief Kevin McCabe heads the Response group that oversees reporting, responding to and investigating cases. The Education group has two leaders, Deb Howard, manager of Employee and Organizational Development, and Debbie Morris, director of Student Activities. They will oversee the awareness and prevention education campaigns campuswide.

The Dean of Students office has also created a “LoboRESPECT Student Team” for students who are interested in this initiative but are not appointed by ASUNM or GPSA. Leonel Diaz at ladiaz@unm.edu is the contact person for more information.

“The student group will help reach students by creating resources such as campaigns and brochures that they directly relate to,” Diaz said. “We’ll be putting together a peer education network, as well.”